INDIA: New Rulers Vow to Put Human Face to Economic Reforms

By Ranjit Devraj Reprint | | Print |

Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, May 13 2004 (IPS) - After the right-wing and business-friendly Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) bit the dust in the just-concluded parliamentary elections, India’s new rulers from the victorious Congress party and its communist allies have promised to continue with economic reforms – but with a human face.

After counting trends on Thursday showed that the BJP, which had deepened and widened the scope of economic reforms, had been reduced to being the second biggest party behind the opposition Congress party, its leader Atal Bihari Vajpayee wasted no time in handing in his resignation as prime minister.

”We will continue with reforms but these will have a human face and have a social security net,” Jayanti Nataran, spokeswoman for the Congress party, told journalists immediately after her party’s victory became apparent.

The Congress party does not have the numbers to rule on its own. But it has the support of the communist parties that make up the Left Front, which has made its best showing yet in parliamentary elections in this country of one billion-plus people.

Where the Congress is expected to end up with around 150 seats, the Left Front was inching toward a figure of 64 seats, making it the second largest component of a new, ‘secular and socialist’ ruling alliance that is now shaping up.

Such an alliance will include major regional parties such as the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), which rules eastern Bihar state and will easily cross the halfway mark of 271 seats in 543-seat Lok Sabha or lawmaking lower house of Parliament.

”We have serious differences with the Congress party so far as economic reforms are concerned – we want reforms but not those dictated by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund,” said Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, the Marxist chief minister of West Bengal in a televised press conference in the state capital of Kolkata. In southern Kerala state, the Left Front claimed 19 of the 20 parliament seats and Marxist leader Sitaram Yechuri attributed this success to a discerning public that opposed economic reforms.

The Left Front is yet to make decision on whether it will actually join the new Congress-led government, but its constituents have set in motion a process of internal consultations before announcing a final decision on Saturday.

However, top leaders of the Left Front – including D Raja of the Communist Party of India (CPI) and Nilotpal Basu of the Marxist Communist Part of India (CPI-M) – said it was important for the new ruling coalition to arrive at a ”common minimum programme”.

Both Basu and Raja were active participants at the World Social Forum (WSF) held in the eastern port city of Mumbai in January, where India’s economic reforms and the pro-rich path it seemed to have taken received their first public airing.

Other issues that came under criticism at the WSF included the BJP-led central government’s inability to check the 2002 anti-Muslim pogrom in western Gujarat state and the application of anti-terrorist laws against political activists and minority groups.

These issues seem to have contributed to the BJP’s losses at the hustings.

Basu pointed out that several of the BJP’s allies in the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) either drifted away because of the negative policies of the coalition leader or paid a heavy price for it in the elections.

The Telugu Desam Party (TDP) in southern Andhra Pradesh, the BJP’s biggest ally, suffered major reverses partly because of its aggressive reform agenda, which excluded poor farmers. It also lost Muslim support after it failed to speak up adequately against the Gujarat pogrom.

Some 35 parliament seats that the TDP contributed to the NDA in parliament were lost to the Congress party in the elections.

Another important constituent of the NDA, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) party in southern Tamil Nadu state, dropped out after the central government failed to stop police attacks unleashed on its cadres by the state government led by J Jayalalithaa, chief minister and leader of the rival All-India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) party.

The AIADMK, which liberally used the draconian Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA) against its political opponents, drew a blank in the elections. This is in contrast to the DMK, which switched loyalty and now supports the Congress party, and has won 36 seats.

But what cost the BJP the elections was the impression that its policies benefited the rich and the powerful, while the Congress party has been able to retain the image of party that cared for the underprivileged.

Pramod Mahajan, the BJP’s campaign manager, admitted in an interview with the NDTV news channel that the BJP was associated with ” well-to-do people, the middle classes and upper caste people” and that it had problems connecting to lower social classes. (END/IPS/AP/IP/EI/RDR/JS/04)